


what does the song hope for?

by fruitwhirl



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Buried Alive, F/M, canon-divergent, set in s2ish, squad's mostly in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23661091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitwhirl/pseuds/fruitwhirl
Summary: “If I were you, I’d try calling one of your friends, let them know you’re about to die. Maybe one of them can give you your burial rites, because they’ll never find you.”There’s a myriad of retorts Jake could spit at him—how his friends are smart and they’ll find him, how they’ll upturn the whole operation—but then the line goes dead and he feels the panic welling up inside his chest, closing up his throat. In this moment, he doesn’t know what to do except for press the old-school buttons, listen for the dial tone as he calls the only person he can think of.“Amy?”
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 19
Kudos: 175





	what does the song hope for?

**Author's Note:**

> everyone: is writing fluffy baby fic  
> me, after twenty years: pls have some angst a la leveráge 
> 
> set in that weird sweet spot between boyle-linetti wedding and det. dave majors, though i'd probably consider this canon-divergent. the title's from w.h. auden's poem "orpheus," and this fic is based off of "the grave danger job" from leverage aka one of the best episodes on television.
> 
> ps apparently rosa has ALSO been buried alive but because it was revealed in s4 it does not factor into this fic as much
> 
> pps this is dedicated to nat (arachnistar) who shares my love for leverage and b99

Jake wakes up with an incessant pounding against his skull.

It’s not a foreign experience for him; both Amy and Holt remind him that he doesn’t drink enough water (eight glasses a week seems like _way_ too much), and he tends to let an episode of _How I Met Your Mother_ lull him to a restless sort of sleep. His bottle of Ibuprofen is perpetually filled with white candy rather than famotidine. But this headache is more than a result of too much whiskey or even his usual dehydration.

First off, he’s wearing a fancy-schmancy penguin suit, a striped tie around his neck like a noose. In all his life, he has never willingly fallen asleep in cufflinks. Furthermore, although he’s lying down, Jake is not in his bed or even on Hitchcock’s nap couch, but rather in something tight, with four walls enclosing him in a small, dark space. Unfortunately, when he sits up, he realizes the ceiling is just a half-foot above him. Surprisingly, not hard but cushioned and lined in silk. Idly, he thinks that if Amy was here, she’d hyperventilate—she told him once how, while at her uncle’s funeral when she was a child, she’d gotten locked in a coffin and had to bang on the walls until someone heard her. 

At the time, her little anecdote was funny. Now, however, he realizes that he’s in the same position as little Amy: trapped, in a coffin.

In retrospect, he should have expected this to happen to him at some point in his life. Being buried alive is one of the most torturous challenges for any action hero to face, and when not in the confines of a movie, it’s definitely sobering. Because he’s not Uma Thurman and if he tries to punch his way out, he _will_ die. Of course, he might be above ground, but when he tries to wiggle the box around, it doesn’t budge, which suggests that he’s stuck in dirt.

“Crap.”

His voice is uncharacteristically raspy, the air around him dry and thin. In vain, he tries to recall the countless “What to Do If You’re Buried Alive” Youtube videos he half-watched after a late-night viewing of _Kill Bill._ Nothing really comes to mind, and Jake hopes that this is an Orange-Drink-induced dream.

And then it all comes back to him a distinct throb in his head: the funeral home identity-theft case, the drug cartel that was buying the social security numbers of the deceased clientele, the meet-up sting that went south and Rosa shouting to Terry in the van and kicking one of the guy’s cronies in the nads while the leader pulled a gun on the both of them, and then the sharp pain at the back of his neck and everything going black.

Understanding now the situation as it is—no one knowing where he is, Rosa probably unconscious or dead or trapped in the same hell as him, his being in a coffin underneath who knows how much dirt and with who knows how much oxygen left—Jake starts to lose the little bit of cool he had.

His breathing grows shallow, his heartbeat picks up, and suddenly the possibility of dying becomes excruciatingly real to him, even more so than when Hoytsman kidnapped him because at least then he knew that the rest of his friends were okay and could find him, maybe. Then, the threat to his life was infallibly human and a little insane, so, in theory, he could drag out his impending murder indefinitely if he kept the guy talking. Despite his best efforts, he can’t do the same thing to the dark, wet earth above him. 

Now, Jake is alone and only has an hour left, tops. Hell, he couldn’t even watch _Die Hard_ in the amount of time it’d take for him to die.

Something starts buzzing against his thigh.

Without questioning _why_ the guy who stuffed him in this coffin would leave him with his phone, Jake fumbles for a moment, his movements restricted by the dimensions of the box, and finally, he grasps at the phone in his pocket. But it’s definitely not his phone; rather, it’s one of those old flip phones that doesn’t even have Internet on it and would probably survive a nuclear apocalypse. He can’t find it within himself to care, and he struggles to open it, to bring it close enough to his face that he can hear whoever’s on the other end.

“Hope you’re digging your new home, _cop._ ”

Jake’s breath catches. It’s the cartel’s ringleader, Octavian, who he met earlier. “What do you want, man?”

“Nothing. Always happy to hear a pig’s last words.” The guy laughs. “If I were you, I’d try calling one of your friends, let them know you’re about to die. Maybe one of them can give you your burial rites, because they’ll never find you.”

There’s a myriad of retorts Jake could spit at him—how his friends are smart and they’ll find him, how they’ll upturn the whole operation—but then the line goes dead and he feels the panic welling up inside his chest, closing up his throat. In this moment, he doesn’t know what to do except for press the old-school buttons, listen for the dial tone as he calls the only person he can think of.

“A-Amy?”

Bored, Amy pushes around a stray staple by her keyboard with her pen.

For the past few days, she’s worked a routine B&E with Boyle that’s nearly wrapped up; all she’s got left is finishing the report. While this would normally be her favorite part of a case—meticulously filling out each detail, proofreading for possible grammatical errors, combing through the evidence to ensure she didn’t miss anything—she finds herself putting it off, occupying her time with continually refilling her coffee-cup and retyping the witness statement. Maybe her dissatisfaction stems from the empty space across from her.

Even a knife-clad Rosa couldn’t get her to admit it, but Amy misses her partner.

She hasn’t seen him for over a week, with their respective cases keeping them out of the precinct for most of the workday. Of course, she’s seen him in passing, though usually on the way to the elevator and always in opposite directions. Or in the copy room, while she’s fiddling with the settings on the scanner because _someone_ decided to photocopy their butt and completely screwed with her perfectly configured dimensions, and Jake came in to grab his own paper off the printer and stood in the doorway for a moment, arms crossed and a smirk across his face. “Just turn the other cheek, Santiago,” he’d said, and she grinned despite her frustration.

That said, it’s felt weird to look up and not see his upturned mouth when Hitchcock accidentally eats shaving cream instead of whip cream. He’s usually at the ready with a joke even if it’s been a long day of paperwork.

But, as mentioned, it’s not been out of the ordinary for him to be gone. What, however, _is_ out of the ordinary is the call she gets around noon.

“Santiago, have you heard from Peralta?” It’s Rosa, and she sounds rougher than usual.

“No, why?”

“Shit.” Her voice sounds on the verge of panic. “The sting went south, and the Sicilianos, they took him.”

A peach pit forms in Amy’s stomach as she waves over Boyle and Holt (Gina follows), puts Rosa on speaker so that she quickly explain the situation again. “What do you need us to do?”

“Amy, I don’t know, I put out an APB for the plates, but—”

And then Amy’s phone starts beeping, an indication that someone’s on the other line. She checks; it’s an unknown number, but with a Brooklyn area code. After asking Rosa to give her a second, Amy answers the other caller.

“A-Amy?” The voice is frantic and tinny, the line rife with static, but that’s undeniably her goofball partner.

“Jake!” Her relief must be tangible, and in the corner of her eye, she sees Holt and Boyle grow closer. “Jake, are you okay? Where are you?”

“Um, I think, I think I'm in one of the Siciliano coffins. I think I’m buried, too. I don't have my earbud, I-I think one of them took it, but he left me a phone. But it's from the Stone Age, so there's probably no GPS, so you can't track me. I-I don't know what to do.”

Holt moves to stand beside Amy. “Peralta, take a deep breath. The boss likely left you a phone to contact us so we can arrange a trade of information.”

“Or they might just want to taunt us,” Boyle pipes up, seemingly without realizing it. Gina pinches him.

“Detective Boyle,” Holt growls. “Call Diaz so she can listen as well.” His voice firms while Boyle does just that. “Peralta, did they leave you a phone number at which we can contact the Sicilianos?”

Jake recites a string of numbers, and Amy writes them down on a pad before glancing at Holt. Carefully, she says, “If he’s getting reception, he can’t be buried that deep, if at all.”

Holt motions for Amy to put mute the speaker, which she does, though after a moment of hesitation. “The Sicilianos might just let Peralta suffocate just to tie up that loose end and make a point to the NYPD. We need to find Peralta first, and then we can deal with the cartel.”

“Captain, he’s got about half an hour of air left before it gets too shallow and he passes out.”

“How do you know that?” Rosa asks. "Have you been buried alive, too?"

“I got locked in a coffin when I was twelve,” Amy replies, shrugging, though a large part of her thinks that Rosa just revealed that she's also been buried alive before. “Afterwards, my brothers teased me so much I wanted to know how long I’d have.”

“Santiago, take it off mute.” She obliges the captain’s orders. “Detective Diaz, you said that they left twenty minutes ago,” Holt observes, crossing his arms. “They have a coffin in the backseat, so they would not go above the speed limit and the traffic in Brooklyn is terrible. If Peralta is, in fact, buried, which he likely is in order to minimize mess, they’d need at least five minutes to bury him. You must be in the radius of the funeral home. Additionally, it may be New York, but it is also the middle of the day, so—”

All three detectives, including Rosa, chime in, _“Cemetery!”_

Over the phone, Jake makes a tinny noise of dissent, but the captain ignores him, instead giving directives to Boyle and Gina to locate graveyards in the vicinity of the funeral home.

Boyle leans into the speaker. “Don’t worry, Jakey, we’re gonna find that hole you’re deep in, no matter how long it takes.”

“Thank you, Charles.”

With that, Boyle and Gina run off to complete their task, while Holt instructs Rosa to take Terry to contact the nearest fire station and tell them the plan. He tells Amy to take Jake off the speaker. Faintly, she can hear her friend calling for someone, anyone. Her captain places a hand on her shoulder lightly, steeling her. “I need you to keep talking to Peralta. With your crippling claustrophobia, you must know how to keep one’s breathing under control.”

Amy nods, bringing her phone to her ear once again. She waits until Holt leaves to speak. “Buried alive, huh? I guess you really are John McClane.” It’s a weak attempt at a joke, but he chuckles anyway.

“Amy, have you even seen any of the movies? McClane never gets buried alive.” She tries to chalk up the brittleness of his voice to the weak signal.

“Wait, how many movies _are_ there?” They both laugh, but it’s shaky. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Holt call for the detectives to suit up, to put on their vests and get moving. “It’s gonna be okay, just take a deep breath.”

“‘It’s gonna be okay, just take a deep breath:’ title of your sex-tape.” But it sounds forced.

“Ha, ha. You know that was pretty lame.”

“Ti—”

“Title of my sex-tape, I know.”

There’s a pause, and then his voice rings out, nearly as small as it was once, when they were outside under the lights of the street and she was dating Teddy and he had his whole life in his hands. “Don’t hang up, Ames.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The plan is simple. There are only three viable cemeteries in a three-mile radius of the funeral home. When they realized that Jake could hear a nearby water-sprinkler, they realized that he should be able to hear sirens as well, even in the noise-ridden city of New York. Two teams—one, in a firetruck, is made up of Rosa, Terry, and whatever firemen they got to drive; the other, in a squad car, made up of Amy, Boyle, and Holt. They’ll drive around each of the cemeteries, blaring their respective sirens, and see if Jake hears either because, according to him, he could “tell between New York’s finest and New York’s lamest in his sleep.” (“You should avoid antagonizing the department trying to help you, Peralta,” Holt reprimands.)

Despite their sirens, it still takes ten minutes to get to their designated cemeteries, with Amy’s team taking Washington and Rosa’s taking the other two.

“Man, I could get a pizza delivered here faster than it’d take for the NYPD to show up,” Jake jokes.

“How would you even tip them?”

“What pizza deliveryman _doesn’t_ carry a shovel in their backseat? In _this_ economy?”

“Jake.”

“You’re shaking your head or rolling your eyes at me, right?”

“…both.”

Then his voice shifts. “But, uh, seriously, how much longer do you think it’s going to take?” He’s trying to maintain something light, something airy, but she knows him too well.

“We’re coming up on Foster now, and Rosa and Terry are just a few minutes from their spots. It won’t be much longer, Jake.”

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath. But the exhale never comes. Over the line, Amy hears a choking sound.

“Jake?”

From the backseat of the squad car, Boyle pipes up with a grim reminder. “We’ve got about eight minutes or so left before the air’s too thin, Captain.”

“ _Eight minutes?”_

His breathing is audibly shallow. Every struggling gasp pulls at her heart, but she doesn’t know how to control it—how to fix it. Frantic and unsure, Amy looks to Holt, shoves the phone into his free hand. “Captain, I don’t know —"

“Santiago, he needs you, not Boyle or even me,” Holt says, stern, but his voice is soft. “You know what to do.” He’s driving, but he glances at her for the smallest of moments, his gaze filled with a sort of earnestness that feels rare. Pressing the phone into the palm of her hand, he doesn’t elaborate on his statement, and Amy decides not to read into it. Well, not too much.

Readying herself, she lifts the phone to her ear and takes in the deep breath that Jake can’t.

Time passes slowly for Jake in those last few minutes. It drags on, like the languid drip of syrup on a tall stack of pancakes or the melt of American cheese on a burger (sue him, he’s hungry). Tortuous. Excruciating. Some other big word Amy would know that he doesn’t.

“Why don’t you tell me about your weirdest case?”

He knows that she’s just trying to pass the time, just trying to keep him from freaking out. Normally, it’d work. But he still doesn’t hear a siren, and his pace quickens when he considers the fact that he doesn’t actually know how much more air he has left, and traffic is the fucking worst so what if he suffocates before—

“Did I ever tell you how, when I was still a beat cop, I was called to a domestic violence dispute in a suburb in Prospect?” Amy’s voice is soft. Jake shakes his head before realizing she can’t see him. “I got there, and the tree in the front yard is _covered_ in women’s bras.”

“What?” Despite his best efforts, it comes out as a gasp.

Over the static-filled line, she chuckles. “There were like thirty bras, all different sizes and patterns. Honestly, it was one of my most uplifting cases.”

“Santiago, did you just make a joke?”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Jake can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. “Whose bras were they?”

“You know, we never actually found out.” He thinks she’s smiling. “But I don’t want to know.”

A comfortable sort of silence falls between them—well, as comfortable as it can get when one of them is trapped in a coffin and the other listens to Holt curse de Blasio. And then, the timer on her watch beeps its warning (two minutes) and Boyle flips the siren on, and it blares and screeches and stuns, and Jake stops breathing.

High-strung herself (not that she’d admit it), Amy has plenty of experience with panic attacks. When she was sixteen and a chaperone at prom, someone locked her in a closet. It took reciting the absolute value of pi three times for her to calm down. So, her heart breaks a little when she hears Jake’s once-even breathing shudder, growing shallow and short.

In the front of the car, Holt says, “It’s go-time!” And Amy has to remind herself of the plan.

“Jake, Jake— _Jake.”_ She doesn’t mean to sound shaken, but she hears him inhale but never exhale and shit, she’s worried. “Jake, I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. But we’re going to get you out of there.”

No response.

Searching her memory, she recalls the steps for how to manage a panic attack. Set goals. “Please, Jake, you’re going to get through this. Jake, you’re going to breathe with me,” she says— _commands,_ really.

“No—no air.”

Reframe the situation. “You’re not in a coffin. You have plenty of air. You’re lying on the couch in the break room, and it kind of smells like Scully’s butt.”

“You’re right, it—it does smell bad in here.” His voice is threadbare, clinging to the little bit of humor he has.

A part of her wants to tease him, because the only thing in there that would stink is him. There’s no time. They’re coming up on Washington. Now, she needs to be honest. “Jake, in a minute, you might hear the siren. It’s either going to be a firetruck or a police siren. If you don’t, it’s okay. Just take a deep breath in with me.” When she doesn’t hear anything, she presses on. “Deep breath in, Jake. Now, breathe out.”

“In. Out. In. Out. Good, Jake. In. Out.”

It’s a mantra that she repeats until she hears his inhale and her own heartbeat steadying. Biting her lip, she wonders how much longer he has left and if he’s even buried in a cemetery at all. God, what if he’s underneath some baseball field because New Yorkers are insane, and she wouldn’t put it past them. For years, she wished that Jake would just shut up, but now… she would give up her stamp collection for one dumb joke about _Die Hard_.

Sixty long seconds later, Jake’s voice crackles. “Thank you,” he whispers.

She doesn’t know what to say—“you’re welcome” sounds too formal, too out of place for the situation they’re in, and “no problem” is too cavalier. Dismissive. “Jake, I—”

“I-I hear something! Sirens!”

Her heart stops. “What kind?”

 _“Police!_ Police sirens!”

“Boyle!” she shouts towards the front of the car. Startled, Boyles’ eyes flick up to the rearview mirror, connecting with Amy’s. “He’s here! He’s at Washington!” To Jake, she says, “We’ve got you, Peralta.”

Because parking doesn’t exist in this city, Boyle pulls up to the entrance, idling in the road while Amy and Holt jump out, open the trunk to retrieve the shovels, and bolt into the cemetery. They don’t have time to dig up every grave—the only choice they have is to hit the shovels against the top of each pile of dirt that looks fresh.

Soon, while she’s venting her frustration on a plot of dumb red dirt, she hears a voice through the phone’s speaker. “Ames, stop. Stop. You’re right above me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Did you just stop hitting it?”

“Yes.”

“Is the captain still trying?”

A quick glance confirms her suspicions. “Yeah.” To Holt, she waves her hands, yells, “Over here! He’s here!”

“I’m coming, Jakey!” She hears Boyle scream from somewhere; God, she’s never been so happy to hear that small man.

The next minute flies by in a blur: she digs and Holt digs and Boyle digs and then, and then, she sees a man come towards them with a gun. And she hears the shot ring out, feels it barely them as she dives to the side, whips her phone out of her pocket one more time. Hears Jake’s gasp of “Amy” and “I can’t breathe.”

“Jake, if you can hear me, I need you take a deep breath, as deep as you can, and hold it. I know you can do this.” The guy shoots at her right as she ducks behind a headstone. She hears a desperate intake of air and hopes that she’s right, that this is the right grave. Wisps of hair that escaped her ponytail cling to her wet cheeks; she wipes at them, her hand shaking. “You have to make it through this because—because you're my friend, Jake, and I need you.” And then she picks up her shovel again, throws her phone on the ground.

The gun fires again, but there’s a grunt and the sound of someone falling down on the soft earth. Hesitantly, she looks around the slab of marble, letting out the breath she didn’t know she was holding as Holt calls, “All clear.” When she steadies her gaze, she sees that Boyle’s cuffing the man who, now kneeling, shot at them.

“The gang leader,” Boyle explains breezily. “Amy, don’t just stand there— _dig.”_ A part of Amy thinks that Holt took a shoveling class, because it’s only thirty seconds before they hit dark, sleek wood and Holt manages to lift the lid.

And there, lying in a swath of white cloth, is her friend.

Amy reaches out a hand, which he takes, and together they bring him back to the daylight. She jokes, “Welcome back to the Land of the Living,” but there’s no levity to it, no matter how hard she tries. With their hands still locked together, Jake holds her gaze, firm. And something’s changed, she knows that by the glint in his eyes and the twitch of his cheek. The furrow of his eyebrow. His thumb, brushing against hers.

“Jake—”

Before she can get another word out, Boyle breaks them apart, tackling his best friend with a hug and refusing to let go until Terry and Rosa arrive with the backup. Each embraces him—even Rosa and Holt—and when they walk back to the squad car, Amy hangs back.

She needs distance. Space. Something to dissolve the weight in her chest.

That night, Jake finds her in the evidence locker, sitting with her back against one of the filing cabinets. Knees drawn up to her chest.

“Hey,” he says, soft. “Mind if I sit?” When she shakes her head, he slides down onto the floor next to her, leaving a few inches of tile between them.

Amy’s face falls to rest against her legs. “Did you get the rest of them?” He quirks an eyebrow, and she glances up at him. “The funeral home people?”

He chuckles—Amy is nothing if not consistent. “The identities we gave them were, uh, fake. Forged. So whenever they end up using them, they’ll come as fakes, so we should be able to track them down.”

“That’s good.”

Jake tries for a joke, “You know, Uma Thurman made escaping being buried alive seem easy.”

Instead of answering, she lets out a shuddering laugh, which wracks her frame easily. Right now, she looks so small, so vulnerable—she never changed out of her dark blue cargo pants and department t-shirt. And she doesn’t respond, but she finally looks at him, eyes glassy.

“I-I never would have made it through that without you. You know that, right, Amy?”

Amy rolls her eyes, shrugs. “Oh, that's not true. Anyone can—”

On an impulse, he leans over, kisses her cheek and lingers, for just a breath. “Thank you,” he whispers against her jaw. “For not hanging up the phone.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments & kudos appreciated if ya want


End file.
